Modeling the Effects of Socioeconomic Factors in Highway Construction and Expansion

Abstract

The increasing commuting population often fuels the need for new highways. As the demand for new highways increases, many low-income neighborhoods are often considered for placement of new highways. While this issue has long been recognized as part of environmental justice and context-sensitive solution initiatives, no quantitative comparisons of highway construction impacts on low-income families have been reported in the literature. The objective of this research is to develop a general methodology to model the effects of socioeconomic factors in highway construction and expansion, to examine impacts on low-income families. The general methodology developed can be applied to various income classes to determine the extent of impact with new highway construction. Penalty costs are chosen and used to penalize highway alignments crossing low-income areas. Multiple values for penalty costs are used to test the sensitivity of generated alignments. Tests are performed to examine the robustness of the developed methodology. The results lead to the need for developing appropriate penalty costs that are suitable for avoiding low-income areas. This research is a first step in quantifying the impacts of highway construction and expansion on low-income families.